This month, AMA Journal of Ethics' theme editor Cameron Waldman, a second-year medical student at Albany Medical College, interviewed Aron Janssen, MD, about how healthcare professionals can better serve their transgender patients.
The American College of Physicians and the Federation of State Medical Boards’ guidelines for online medical professionalism apply existing norms of communication and confidentiality to new settings but will need to be modified in light of technological advances and unanswered questions.
AMA J Ethics. 2015;17(5):441-447. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2015.17.5.nlit1-1505.
Laurel J. Lyckholm, MD and Arwa K. Aburizik, MD, MS
Decision-making capacity can be preserved in patients with mental illness and should be formally assessed in the context of their values and past decisions.
AMA J Ethics. 2017;19(5):444-453. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2017.19.5.ecas4-1705.
The revisions balance a growing understanding of gender identity disorders and societal views with the need to retain conditions that benefit from intervention and the removal of which would hamper patients’ ability to receive medical treatment.
The history of the AMA's policy on anencephalic newborns as organ donors is a living example of what medical science can do sometimes conflicts with society's support or nonsupport of those possibilities.